Maze routing (was '"Smart" movement')

[bob at fla dot fujitsu dot com (Bob Carragher)]

> > Is this already implemented?  Is it too much hassle, or would
> > cause a blow-up in memory?
> 
> It's certainly not implemented now!  It would be some work, but not
> a ridiculous amount, and I don't think the memory consumption would
> be huge, because the waypoints would just be tasks, and there is
> already machinery to manage task queues effectively.  My big concern
> would be compute time on large worlds.  Since a really twisted maze
> route might have to wander all over the world, the algorithm to
> compute the route might have to scan hundreds of thousands of cells,
> so it needs to be possible to restrict the area being searched.

I can imagine this concern as well.  There are ways around it.
One is to figure out a way to restrict the search area.  A
dialog box interface comes to mind.  Also, point-and-click
"descriptions" of search areas might work.

In any case, the user might still cause a lot of CPU time to
be consumed.  The game could through up another dialog box which
contains a button to stop calculations.  Then, whatever "best"
route that was found would be displayed.  (If none were available,
then maybe a message would be printed in the messages area stating
that this was the case.)

But these strike me as relatively easy things to do.  The harder
task would be implementing the maze routing and the display
aspects.  Do you agree?

				Bob